1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to online commerce and, more specifically, to recommending groups of items based on item ranks.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventional digital content distribution systems usually include a content server, an application, a content player, and a communications network connecting the content server to the content player. The content server is configured to store digital content files corresponding to different content titles that can be downloaded from the content server to the content player. The application allows a user of the content player to browse through available digital content and manage account information, etc.
Typical digital content distribution systems offer a large variety of digital media to the user for viewing. In order to enhance the user experience, content distribution systems often personalize digital media recommendations to the individual user, recommending a number of items in a number of groups, e.g. where items are movies, group definitions might be “Dark Comedies” or “80's Thrillers”. One approach to selecting the group definitions to recommend is to examine the user's previously selected items, identify group definitions those items belong to, and select the most frequently occurring of those group definitions. One drawback of this approach does not consider the desirability of the items for the user, so may fail to recommend the most desirable items to the user
As the foregoing illustrates, what is needed in the art is a mechanism for recommending groups of digital content to a user that contain the most desirable items for the user.